{"product_id":"9780967967585","title":"Hotel Kid: A Times Square Childhood","description":"A Manhattan landmark for fifty years, the Taft in its heyday in the 1930s   and '40s was the largest hotel in midtown, famed for the big band in its   basement restaurant and the view of Times Square from its towers. As the son of   the general manager, Stephen Lewis grew up in this legendary hotel, living with   his parents and younger brother in a suite overlooking the Roxy Theater. His   engaging memoir of his childhood captures the colorful, bustling atmosphere of   the Taft, where his father, the best hotelman in New York, ruled a staff of   Damon Runyonesque house dicks, chambermaids, bellmen, and waiters, who made sure   that Stephen knew what to do with a swizzle stick by the time he was in the   third grade.    \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  The star of this memoir is Lewis's fast-talking, opinionated, imperious mother, who adapted so completely to hotel life that she rarely left the Taft. Evelyn Lewis rang the front desk when she wanted to make a telephone call, ordered all the family's meals from room service, and had her dresses sent over from Saks. During the Depression, the tough kids from Hell's Kitchen who went to grade school with Stephen marveled at the lavish spreads his mother offered her friends at lunch every day, and later even his wealthy classmates at Horace Mann-Lincoln were impressed by the limitless hot fudge sundaes available to the Lewis boys.   \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLewis contrasts the fairy-tale luxury of his life   inside the hotel with the gritty carnival spirit of his Times Square   neighborhood, filled with the noise of trolleys, the smell of saloons, the   dazzle of billboards and neon signs. In \u003cem\u003eHotel Kid\u003c\/em\u003e, lovers of New York   can visit the nightclubs and movie palaces of a vanished era and thread their   way among the sightseers and hucksters, shoeshine boys and chorus girls who   crowded the streets when Times Square really was the crossroads of the world.   ","brand":"Dry, Paul Books, Incorporated","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47035225506032,"sku":"9780967967585","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780967967585_p0.jpg?v=1763884679","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780967967585","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}